A Scientific Meeting presented by Dr. Joseph Fernando, MDCM. This presentation explores the links between trauma, guilt, and the superego, and through this exploration attempts to make some additions to our understanding of individual dynamics, group regression, and group delusions. Dr. Fernando first describes his concept of the zero process as the form of mental functioning that is a product of the breakdown of the construction of the present moment during trauma. These unconstructed, bits and pieces memories exist as present experiences or future expectations.

From time to time, in relation to traumas that are either individual or developmental, inner objects which have the quality of immediate presences form — we usually call them introjects. The presenter suggests that these are best conceptualized as zero process structures in having many characteristics of the zero process, and that the obligatory connection between trauma and guilt, and the manner of transmission of culture and the superego, and of conspiracy theories and other group delusions, can be better and more deeply understood once the part that zero process structures play in all these phenomena is brought into focus.

CE